Just a quick little side-story. This is in no way connected to "Journey", this was merely just some writing that needed to come out, and out it came. This was all written in the space of about... 2 hours while I was watching BBM. Just for the record, it's a little alternate universe I guess, but it makes me feel a little better about the way the film and the short story end.
Once again, the characters aren't mine, I'm just borrowing them for a little while.
Once upon a time, there was a young man named Jack. He grew up in a decent, hard-working family and from those humble beginnings, he could never have guessed that his life would turn out the way it has.
I am Jack. Hello, it's nice to meet you. It's true. When I was a young man, I never would have thought that my life would turn out the way it has. In fact, if you had tried to tell me that, I would have told you that you were a goddamn lunatic and you ought to get your head checked. But even through all of the things that have happened over the years, what with Ennis, and Lureen, and the events that occurred because of my relationships with those people, I can't bring myself to regret any of my actions, or to resent any of the people or any of the things that happened.
I met Ennis Del Mar in 1963. I was nineteen years old and as soon as I saw him standing there outside of Aguirre's trailer, I just didn't know how to take him. I'd always been a chatty guy, and Ennis was exactly the opposite. To be honest with y'all, I didn't know how I was gonna deal with him for an entire summer, and I did all I could to loosen his tongue. I can't tell you how relieved I was when he finally started talking to me.
I swear what happened up on Brokeback wasn't on purpose. Until that night, I hadn't looked at Ennis as anything more than a workmate, I swear it to you, but that night, when he came into my tent, and I could feel his body behind me, I couldn't get the thought out of my head. I needed to kiss him; I needed to be near him, to be with him. I know I was lonely, and so was he, but I don't know whether it was loneliness or attraction that made us do what we did. Either way, there's no use dwelling on the whys of it all.
That night was the start of something big. If I'd known that first night what my life was going to be like, I don't know if I'd have done it at all. I know Ennis certainly wouldn't have let it happen. The morning after it happened, I was sure it would never happen again. The look that Ennis gave me as he rode off up the mountain to be with the sheep was one of judgment and condemnation, something I surely didn't expect to see in his eyes. As I washed my clothes in the river, I can remember thinking about how I'd royally fucked things up and that after we left the mountain, I was never going to see him again. But then when he came back down the mountain and we talked, he told me everything, and he told me he wasn't queer. I told him I wasn't either, but I think I was lying. That night, he came into my tent again, and I saw a completely different side of him. He was gentle, and when I kissed him, I felt like everything was going to be okay. I still remember that night like it was yesterday. I think I fell in love with him that night.
The next few weeks passed in a blur. I was so happy, certainly happier than I'd ever been before. I didn't even care about the potential consequences of what we were doing.
When Aguirre came up the mountain to tell me my uncle had pneumonia and wasn't expected to make it, I'm ashamed to say that the only reason I didn't want to go down to see him was because I didn't want to sacrifice the rest of the time I had left with Ennis.
When we were made to come back down the mountain and Ennis told me he probably wouldn't be back the next year, for a while, I felt like I didn't have anything to look forward to, I felt really lost, and then I started to get over him. Or rather, I think I started trying to forget him. I started to lose him to the bottom of whiskey glasses and in cheap, meaningless encounters with various young women. Every once in a while I'd see him in a look in their eyes and my heart would break all over again and I'd be back at the beginning. Then I met Lureen.
Whether you believe me or not, I was deeply in love with her. She was the complete opposite of Ennis, and I think I liked that about her. There was nothing in the way she looked at me that reminded me of him, and that made my life a whole lot more simple and a whole lot less painful.
Don't get me wrong. Every so often, I'd think of him, I'd send up a prayer that he was happy with his wife, that they had a few kids. I used to imagine him with a son, playing baseball, teaching the kid to ride a horse. It wasn't until after Bobby was born that I felt ready to see him again, and so I wrote to him. I didn't expect to hear anything back from him, to be honest with you, but lo and behold, I got my reply and I couldn't get to him fast enough.
I didn't mean for that whole thing to start over again when we saw each other. I'd be lying if I told you that I hadn't thought about it. Of course I had. I wanted nothing more than to be with him, feel his skin underneath my fingers, his lips against mine, but I told myself that I'd exercise a shred of self-control and keep my hands off him. However, as soon as I got out of my truck, he was on me, had me pressed up against the wall, and my heart was pounding. I remember the way he looked around to see if anyone was looking. We'd later find out that his wife had seen from the window, but not until years later. Just before we made our way upstairs to their place, he whispered to me, "Missed you." Those words made me feel like I could fly. Feeling his arms around me once again was the best feeling in the world, and it brought back all of the familiar feelings from up on Brokeback. We were twenty-three then, but we might as well have been nineteen again, fumbling around in the dark, that night in the tent.
The next twenty years were both heaven and hell, I had the best of times, I had the worst of times and everything in between. The time I got to spend with Ennis, that was heaven. When I was with him, there was a feeling inside me that I was where I was meant to be, a feeling I certainly didn't get with Lureen. I don't know if she ever suspected the extent of our situation, I know she did suspect something on some level. When news of Ennis's divorce reached me, I straight away got in my truck and feeling on top of the world, I went to him. I was ready to leave Lureen, move in with him, start a ranch, but when I got to him, he had his girls, and told me that we couldn't be together. Not then. I cried all the way home, quite literally and I must have looked a wreck when I walked back into my house. Bobby had long since gone to bed, and Lureen had taken me by the hand, led me to bed, and we made love. Afterwards, she asked me if I wanted to talk, and I made up some story about something going on with my family. She suspected something to do with Ennis though, because she asked me, "It's Ennis, isn't it?" I rolled over and went to sleep. In the morning, she refused to look me in the eye.
The times when I got to see Ennis were few and far between and they weren't all a bed of roses, I can assure you. The arguments we had made me want to throw myself (or him) off a cliff. He made me furious, much more angry that Lureen ever had, but the look in his eyes always got me and I could never stay mad at him, not with his arms around me, feeling his warmth pressed against me. He was irresistible.
Mine and Lureen's marriage grew more and more strained. We hadn't had sex in months, and to be honest, I didn't want to, and neither did she, I don't reckon. I spent my days pining over Ennis, cursing him for being too much of a fucking coward to be with me, and I spent my nights dreaming about him, about how it could be with us.
Then there was Lashawn and Randall. In my head, I'd made it a game. How long could I get around with both of them without the other finding out? The sex with Lashawn wasn't even fun. The woman never shut up, she was too different from Ennis. With Randall, I was just getting what I didn't get often enough with him. When me and Randall were together, all that was going through my head was him. He found out, one night I accidentally let Ennis's name slip out through my gritted teeth, and he called the whole thing off.
Everything changed when I got hurt. Realistically speaking, I should be dead.
It all started when Lureen's father found out about my trips to Mexico. I knew I was being followed. It wasn't my father-in-law following me personally, but he had people on the job. I was on my way back one day, I'd just pulled into town and I got out of my car before I got to the house, in a parking lot. If anything was going to happen, I didn't want it happening in front of Bobby or Lureen. The two guys that were in the car beat me to within an inch of my life. They came at me with tire irons and crowbars and all I could think of was how much I needed Ennis there with me, not to protect me but to make it all better once they were done. I didn't have any clue how I was going to manage to survive but there I was making all kinds of promises to God about what I'd do if he let me live. "Lord, see me through this and let me live another day and I swear I'll find a way to be with Ennis because I'm sure that you sent him to me, or if you never want me to see him again, I'll do that, I swear I will, I'll quit him like I've been saying I want to all of these years, just let me live, please. I don't want to die."
I came so close to dying. I'd never been so close and I don't think I'll ever be that close again until the day I do finally pass. I could see light, everything was white and I was lying on the ground. My head was pounding, I could hear my heartbeat in my ears, and my whole body was throbbing. I was sure that most of my bones were broken. As I looked up at the sky, I saw Ennis's face coming towards me, and that's how I knew I was about to die.
From that moment until I woke up, I have no idea what came to pass. All I know is that when I woke up, I opened my eyes, turned my head, and saw Ennis sitting in a plastic chair next to my bed, his hat on his lap, his hands folded over his chest, his long legs stretched out under the bed, his eyes closed, and I could hear him breathing and I was convinced that I'd died. I was so convinced that I tried to get out of bed, before I realized my entire body was in bandages or casts of some kind, and that with every movement my bones would scream with pain.
Turns out that Ennis had been on his way to see me. After our last fight, he'd stewed and stewed. He'd been so torn up and decided that he needed to see me. That's how he'd ended up with me in the hospital and I'd been so grateful that his was the first face I'd seen.
The pain was excruciating and I got tired and frustrated of not being able to do things for myself, but Ennis stayed. I yelled at him, I screamed at him because I was disgusted with myself for failing to be a man. Real men didn't need someone else do everything for them, but through my abuse and my barrage of insults, Ennis stayed and inside, deep down, that made me deliriously happy.
It took weeks, months of physical therapy to be able to walk again, Lureen's father's men had done a good job on me, but I couldn't find it in myself to be bitter about it. Not with Ennis around. We didn't get a chance to talk things over until I was out of the hospital. While I was in, Lureen never left for long enough that we could really talk. The first thing we did when I was well enough was go back to Brokeback. It always seemed the perfect place to return to. There was something special, something that held us there, something pulled us back every damn time.
We talked for hours, I'd feel pretty safe in saying that our discussion lasted days, and we finally decided that we'd do what I'd been wanting for years, the very thing that I'd given up on ever getting from Ennis.
It all happened like a whirlwind. Lureen and I separated. She took Bobby, which I was fine with, as long as I got to see him enough, and she didn't have any objections. This makes me think that she'd suspected for a while. If I know Lureen, and I do, I know that if she'd been hearing that news for the first time, or if she hadn't had any time to get used to the idea, she would not have been so easy to deal with.
So, that's how I come to be here today, telling you my side of our story.
Ennis and I bought a ranch. We lived together for thirty years. I am seventy years old now and both Ennis's children and mine are long grown with beautiful families of their own. We've had a good life. We did well for ourselves. We live in a world that allows us to be who we are, for the most part. We keep to ourselves mostly, but when people find out how we are, and how we live, they don't look down upon us like Ennis always feared they would. We are accepted.
Ennis is lying in the bed in this room, and I am in a seat by his bedside. In this room, I have everything I could ever need in the world, and soon, he will be gone. He is dying. Years of smoking finally caught up to him and ravished his lungs, and now I am about to lose him. I am so scared to be without him, but as I look at the old man in the bed beside me, as I look into his eyes, as he talks to me in his own wordless way, I realize that in the end, I lived my fairytale, we lived happily ever after.